Test Your Clever Side With 'Another Thing'

Each week, All Things Considered and Lenore Skenazy, author of the book and blog Free-Range Kids, bring you "Another Thing," an on-air puzzle to test your cleverness skills. We take a trend in the news and challenge you to help us satirize it with a song title, a movie name or something else wacky.

This week's challenge: A handful of private companies are taking reservations for space flights. That means that there may soon be a lot of tourists floating around — which, in turn, means a lot of mouths to feed.

What will be the name of the first chain restaurant in outer space?

Submit your entry using the form below or by sending your answer with your name, address and phone number to anotherthing@npr.org. If submitting via email, please type "Space Food" in the subject line.

Entries are due by 12 p.m. EDT on Sept. 12. All entries become property of NPR, which reserves the right to edit them. Entries submitted as comments on this Web page cannot be considered. In the case of several similar entries, the first one received gets credit.

The winner will be announced on All Things Considered on Sept. 17. The first-prize winner will receive an NPR mug.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

Now we have something for you to do, a chance to show us your clever side.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

As listeners we'd like to have you take part in a new, weekly contest. And to introduce the premise and the procedures, here's Lenore Skenazy. Hi, Lenore. And what's your role in this?

SKENAZY: Yes, it does. We're calling it Another Thing Considered, Another Thing for short. Remember that because that's the title we're going to use for submissions, which I'll remind you about when we finish.

CORNISH: Now, you came to us with this idea, which we want to sort of try out, right?

SKENAZY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a history with contests. It started when I was in college, I would always enter the New York Magazine contests. And then, once I moved to New York, I started my own contest in the New York Daily News asking questions about people's lives - like what one question would you like to ask your pet?

CORNISH: And now you have a contest in the publication called The Week?

SKENAZY: Yeah. Here's an example, and it will give listeners an idea of the sort of humor we're looking for here. Recently, I was playing off a news story about shoplifters who are targeting the detergent Tide. They're actually using it as sort of black market currency. So I asked readers to come up with the name of the first mystery about a Tide heist. And the winners were things like, In Cold Suds, and Farewell My Laundry, and, you'll like this one, Clean Harry.

CORNISH: Yeah, that's a good one. And now you're here with this contest for ALL THINGS CONSIDERED listeners to play. So, what's our first one?

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SKENAZY: Audie, to start us off, I was thinking about the fact that space tourism is expected to become a billion dollar industry in the next 10 years.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV AD)

SIR RICHARD BRANSON: Astronauts of the past 45 years have all returned to Earth struggling to convey the enormity of what they've discovered and with their perceptions clearly changed. To be able to extend that privilege to people from all walks of life has been a long-held ambition of Virgin.

SKENAZY: That was Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Airlines, pitching his plans to fly tourists into space. He's calling his company Virgin Galactic. But his is just one of a handful of companies planning to offer private space flights, which are actually already getting popular. People are signing up for them.

CORNISH: All right. So how does this apply to our challenge?

SKENAZY: That's a good question. I was thinking there's going to be a lot of tourists floating around up there, which means a lot of mouths to feed in space. So, this week's Another Thing Considered question is...

(SOUNDBITE OF DRUMROLL)

SKENAZY: What will be the name of the first chain restaurant in outer space? My friends and I were just coming up with ideas: Jabba the Pizza Hut, or maybe Bob's Big Bang?

CORNISH: OK. So where can they send in their pitches?

SKENAZY: They should send their answers by noon Eastern Time, my time, on Wednesday, to AnotherThing@npr.org. And, you know, if they can remember that, maybe they can also remember to please write Space Food in the subject line. But if you don't, we'll read the entries anyway. So, either write to AnotherThings@npr.org or you can just go to the NPR website and look for the contest on the ALL THINGS CONSIDERED page.

CORNISH: And the winner gets, what? A trip to outer space?

SKENAZY: Yeah, almost. The winner gets a mug that is out of this world. Still, it's something, right? It's a mug. You can drink out of it.

CORNISH: Okay, Lenore, thanks. Lenore Skenazy is the Contest Queen of our new competition, Another Thing Considered. We'll give you the results next Monday and ask a new contest question then, too.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV AD)

BRANSON: Well, I hope you will be traveling on a spaceship owned and operated by Virgin Galactic. See you up there.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

BLOCK: You are listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.